As COMPUTEX TAIPEI steps into its 25th year, it is of great news that COMPUTEX TAIPEI is already the world's second largest IT exhibit. This year's event also breaks its own records in scope, scale and numbers.

Art Ilano, managing editor for m|ph, and I scoured through the thousands of booths at COMPUTEX TAIPEI '05 in search of interesting new devices and technology. With its record volume of IT products on display, our first day at the exhibit sent us into surreal world of music, chatter (in languages we do not understand at all), pretty girls, loads of devices, walking monitors, angels, mascots, toys, and plain hoards of people.

It was so easy to get lost in the sea of people, and it was even more difficult to find your way back to a booth you wish to visit once again. Our first day was not as fruitful but we had a grand time in the BenQ booth and was able to play around with the BenQ P50. It's a very nice looking device, and should be available in some regions within the year. The only question is... What operating system will it carry?

This is Art with his evil smile while playing around with the BenQ P50.

I was able to find the Microsoft booth there and they concentrated on Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded. Now it was nice to see a few more new devices there. Some which we surely hope to make it in our respective regions. I'll be posting the photos on these devices soon.

The venue was around the world's tallest building - the Taipei 101 Tower which will later visit. It's just incredible and it is laden with a lot of high-tech stuff too.

Here is the view of the main hall from the outside. It really looks deceiving since it just seems to extends all the way to eternity once you enter the venue.

Inside the venue, more people advertising more products in really interesting ways. This one is a photo of a small group of ad people doing their rounds with backpack-style monitors which displays their advertisements.

Of course, as I have told you earlier, there are some neat stuff and one of the things we were shown was the TOPY DataPlay disc at the RiDATA booth. It's the smallest optical media in the world which is available in 500 MB capacity and soon in 750MB and probably 1GB capacities.

And while at the BenQ booth, where I was able to play more with the P50 and also a chance to take a look at the new BenQ JoyBook notebooks, as well as the JoyBee music players, some activities to promote the brand were held by pretty girls!

I think this will serve as a good intro for my COMPUTEX TAIPEI '05 story so stay tuned as I will be posting more photos of what's hot in COMPUTEX TAIPEI '05.